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Devastated by flood, Salina Café owner thankful for 'sweet community'

Anne Brady: 'I move rocks around and look for possibilities for the future'

By Charlie Brennan Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
11/27/2013 05:50:41 PM MST

Updated:
11/27/2013 06:00:45 PM MST

Anne Brady stands outside her business, the Salina Café, which was devastated in the September floods, along with her house and a rental home she owns in Salina. Still, she says she s thankful for the community that has rallied around her. (Mark Leffingwell / Daily Camera)

Anne Brady, one of thousands of Coloradans dealt a cruel blow by nature in September, is also one of many who arrive at today's holiday with a sense of gratitude.

That might be surprising, given the swath of destruction that devastated her home, a rental property and her business, the Salina Café, an anchor to the tiny and closely-knit mountain enclave that is still in flood recovery.

Topping the list of things for which she is thankful today is something far more enduring than anything that can be created or replaced with hammer and nails.

"I am thankful for the sweet community of Salina," said Brady, 66, who is for now living in Denver with her "significant other."

Her thanks extend also to a long list of volunteer and charitable organizations, including neighbors, friends, the Mormon Helping Hands, All Hands Volunteers, Foothills United Way, Boulder's Mudslingers, Saws and Slaws, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and more.

"We have all banded together," Brady said. "It's wonderful, because everyone has looked out for everyone else -- those who have had to leave and can't return, and those who have stayed but are dealing with the day-to-day that the catastrophe entails."

The "day to day," for Brady, is daunting.

The house she purchased in 1980 on two-thirds of an acre on Gold Run Road is gone, its wreckage having been finally bulldozed into rubble a few weeks ago by a friend. An attached rental property, which enabled her to pay her mortgage, is unusable, until it sees some costly restoration.

As for the café itself?

"At this point, it is stripped down to two-by-fours and floor joists," Brady said. "Everything had to be taken out because of the flood," which left it 3-feet deep in mud. "There is no furnace, no hot water heater. And there it sits, until I know whether I will be able to reclaim any of what's left of the property."

Anne Brady, left, talks with FEMA inspector Jerry Williams on Sept. 19 on Gold Run Road. Brady s home, a rental house and her business, the Salina Café, were devastated in September s flooding.
(
JEREMY PAPASSO
)

All of this after she, her son Pierce and others previously had to shovel out small mountains of mud throughout the property in July 2011 after flash flooding exacerbated by the previous year's Fourmile Fire.

"I've learned to be a survivor," Brady said. "And part of it is that property. We went through the fire, and then two years ago with the first flood, we just rolled up our sleeves. The community came. My house -- which is now bulldozed -- had almost 2 feet of mud in it, and everyone in the community just showed up and we shoveled it out the first night."

'We really need her to come back'

Community. It's a word that comes up a lot in conversations with Salina residents as they talk about the trials they endured in September, and the challenges faced in the aftermath of a storm that destroyed 313 homes in Boulder County.

Michelle Grainger, who, with husband Steve LeGoff, barely escaped a calamitous end themselves when the muddy torrent threatened to bury them in their own Salina home, said both Brady and the Salina Café were "pillars" in the town.

"We have three buildings that are landmarks: the historic school house, the Little Church in the Pines and the café," said Grainger, whose wedding-eve party was hosted there.

"She always had a smile on her face, and we really need her to come back, because she has been such a long-standing member of the community," Grainger said of Brady. "The café means a lot, because it's a meeting place, and it's a place where it's quiet and warm and the door is always open."

Not always.

Brady, who bought the property in 1980 and started operating the café in 1987, sold it in 2000 and moved to Grand Junction for two years. Upon her return, since the café was no longer licensed to operate as it had before, she started using it as a base from which to do special events catering, ranging from church affairs to dinner parties, birthday celebrations and even feeding members of a monthly community film society.

The café -- which originally was a general store serving local miners -- had not been operating in recent years with regular business hours. But, built in 1886 and designated three years ago as a Boulder County Historic Landmark, it never lost its standing as a central hub to the rural neighborhood.

"It didn't just represent good food in an historic building, but it represented a community," Grainger said.

For Wall Street resident and Fourmile Fire Protection District volunteer Brian Schuller, the café embodied a spirit of "sharing."

Its comeback, he said, "would be very significant for the community. Not just for the community of Salina, but for the broader community. People used to like to come up from Boulder on their bikes, and meet there. It was a great, vibrant spot to have."

A recovery still in question

To Pierce Brady, now living in Superior, the ravaged property represented home.

"It's the second time I've had to go up there and do recovery work in the past few years," said Pierce Brady, who lived there with his mother from the mid-'80s to mid-'90s, and considers it the place he grew up.

"I was up there when the fire struck... It leaves no question as to which is the worst disaster, between fire and flood. They'll still be recovering a year from now."

He has started an online campaign at gofundme.com to raise money for the Salina Café Recovery Fund, which enables people to donate, anonymously if they choose, toward a goal of $100,000. To date, it has garnered $4,450 in donations from 59 donors.

"I know she's feeling genuinely thankful for the amount of volunteer work generated by people who had no idea of the level of devastation until they arrived up there at the scene," Pierce Brady said. "She has been awestruck at the sheer number of people who have come up there and helped her -- and expected nothing in return."

But Anne Brady said a property once valued at about $400,000 saw its value slashed to about $75,000 by the storm. Nevertheless, she still owes the same payments on the same mortgage she held before it struck. The only concession she has won from Wells Fargo, she said, is a 90-day extension on payments now due. And without use of her damaged rental property, she currently has no way to generate funds to meet her monthly bank obligation.

She's grateful to have promptly been paid the maximum possible from the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- $31,900 -- but also recognizes that in the face of her current obligations, "It's, frankly, a drop in the bucket."

Brady celebrated an early Thanksgiving with her son on Saturday, and this week she was right back to work in Salina, striving for a recovery that remains in question.

"I don't know what the future holds, but I'm trying to go ahead and clean out the rest of the mud that didn't get cleaned out before in the rental property," she said.

"And I'm still trying to salvage things in the café kitchen that I can bring back and store in a safer place, because it's pretty exposed up there. I move rocks around and look for possibilities for the future -- if things go well."

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